Hugh Aston Building, De Montfort University

A landmark building in the centre of Leicester is improving the learning experience for business and law students. The building sits on a prime site, capitalising on the inner ring road realignment and providing excellent facilities for the university. The project has revitalised an area of considerable historic interest in the thriving city and provides accommodation for the schools of business and law.

An impressive building design features a number of large, copper clad lecture theatres, angled along the main street frontage and backing onto a dramatic atrium space. A sheltered courtyard space with winter gardens has been created from the curved shape of the building, providing daylight for a series of small cellular offices.

DMU-BusinessLaw-Hugh-Aston-CPMG-Architects1

“This building transforms the campus and provides an impressive focal point. It is innovative and imaginative but also functional, thereby helping to provide all students with the best possible teaching and learning environment.”

- Professor David Wilson, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law

The courtyard is shared with the adjoining Performing Arts Centre for Excellence (PACE), providing a vibrant external setting for performances, as well as general social use. Ground floor accommodation to the south of the building includes a café and retail space facing onto a landscaped square. The scheme was delivered to minimise the university’s carbon footprint, both in construction and in a lifetime of use and has achieved a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) rating of ‘excellent’.